TRACK: INTERNET AND THE DIGITAL ECONOMY

Minitrack: Social Networking and Communities

This minitrack focus is primarily on social media and their interrelations with communities (online and offline) in the context of work, personal life, and education. We would like to attract papers that address issues of social networking and online communities of practice, inquiry and interest; political, social, and gaming communities. Community building and community management can be key success factors in the digital economy and society, encompassing work, education, social life, and play. We call for papers that address communities and social networks at work, school, home, and play. Examples of the possible interdisciplinary topics of interest in these contexts include, but are not limited to the following: Social, political and/or economic impact on social media Communities as sociological phenomenon in the digital economy Community development and community informatics Design, development and user studies of social media Online communities of practice Business models of Second Life E-learning: structures, implementations, and practices Organizational behavior of communities Social network studies and analysis on online communities Peer-to-Peer or mobile services for Virtual Communities Case studies and topologies of Online Communities Theoretical models of virtual worlds Advertising in social networks Preventing predatory behavior Behaviors in online gaming communities Conflicts between real and virtual worlds Diffusion and adoption of social networks Methodologies and development techniques Critical perspectives on social media and local and/or virtual community Disruptive strategies of virtual worlds Online addiction and anti-social behavior Legal and ethical issues of virtual worlds Privacy and security issues

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Minitrack Leaders Caroline Haythornthwaite (primary contact) School of Library, Archival & Information Studies University of British Columbia Irving K. Barber Learning Centre Suite 470- 1961 East Mall Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z1 Tel: (604) 827-4790 Fax: (604) 822-6006 Email: haythorn@interchange.ubc.ca Karine Nahon The Information School University of Washington Mary Gates Hall, Room 330W, Box 352840 Seattle, WA 98195-2840 Tel: (206) 685-6668 Email: karineb@uw.edu Caroline Haythornthwaite is Director and Professor, School of Library, Archival and Information Studies, University of British Columbia. She joined UBC in 2010 after 14 years at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where she was Professor in the Graduate School of Library and Information Science. In 2009-10, she was Leverhulme Trust Visiting Professor at the Institute of Education, University of London and in summer 2009 was a visiting researcher at the Brazilian Institute for Information in Science and Technology (IBICT), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. She has an international reputation in research on information and knowledge sharing through social networks, and the impact of computer media and the Internet on work, learning and social interaction. Her studies have examined social networks of work and media use, the development and nature of community online, distributed knowledge processes, the nature and constraints of interdisciplinary collaboration, and the transformative effects of the Internet and web 2.0 technologies on learning and collaborative practices. Karine Nahon is associate professor at the Information School, Director of the Virality of Information (retroV) research group, faculty adjunct at the department of communication, affiliated faculty at the Center for Communication and Civic Engagement and former director of the Center for Information & Society in University of Washington. Her research area is information politics and policy. More specifically, she deals with three areas of study that are intertwined: (1) information flows and network gatekeeping; (2) digital divide/s and inequalities; and (3) cultured technology. This area mainly derives from my academic training in multiple disciplines and fields: political science, computer science, management of information systems, sociology and information science.

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